A goat. That was the first thing entered into Rey’s mind. A few more seconds and he had analysed the person in front completely. He was a white furred, kind-looking, sort of cartoonish goat Demi with short horns protruding from his head. He wore a long sleeve shirt with alternating yellow and light green stripes on his compact body, a pair of black gloves on both his hands, dark blue jean on his skinny legs and blue sports shoes on his, well, feet.

“Howdy! My name’s Aster, nice to meet you. You are Reynard Foxtale, correct?”

“Yes.” Both of them shook and released their hands as Rey answered.

“I am assigned to be your guide alongside your roommate, Elliot. Is he here right now?” He was taller than Rey, thus he asked the question after peeking inside the room, which it was empty.

“He’s in the washroom right now.”

“I’ll be waiting then. You really are something, Rey. Second day here and you already made a name for yourself.” Aster felt proud knowing that even before meeting his juniors, one of them had become somewhat famous. He never had a brush with fame for two years up until now. He was really excited. It was a little uncomfortable for Aster after that because Rey didn’t say a single word before Eli entered the main room. He saw Rey staring at someone and brought himself closer to him. Rey nudged himself towards the door’s right edge to allow Eli greet the individual in front.

Aster did a similar introduction of himself for Eli as he did with Rey. Eli built up the courage inside him and said, “He-Hello. My name is Eli, nice to meet you.” Unlike Rey looking directly at Aster’s eyes when they shook hands, Eli entirely avoided eye contact; his head was slightly aimed diagonally downwards to the right. His performance was better when it was Rey because they are of the same age and he felt more comfortable. But when it comes to people of older ages, he can’t readily overcome his shyness.

“A shy one, eh? Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it as time goes by. I, too, was shy back then when meeting new people, but now I’m enjoying it,” He released Eli’s hand, chuckled after the last word came out from his mouth, then continued, “We should head to the cafeteria. I’ll explain some of the things both of you should know en route.” Hinoko immediately jumped and landed on Rey’s shoulder right after Aster finished his sentence. It startled Aster a little bit, although his curiosity was much stronger and he bent down his body towards her.

“Amazing. You managed to make a Kitsune your familiar, a young one even more so. The Bond on her front leg is so small. So, you befriended her. I’m impressed.” The fox backed her body away slightly and stared at Aster intensely. It’s obvious she disliked him; he noticed it too and so returned to his original position.

“Sorry little fella. I’ve never seen a young Kitsune in real life before. I got a little too excited. Come, let’s go to the cafeteria.” He gestured them to follow and took off. Eli and Rey sauntered side by side behind Aster while Rey calmed Hinoko down.

“As you both have already known, the classes don’t start until one week after your first arrival at the Academy. During this period, older students will show the newcomers the ropes. I’m a third year, hence I have to be your guide for one week, or six days now I suppose. Frankly, I enjoy it. If you have any questions, please ask away.” Said Aster when the three of them were in the elevator and continued after they exited it to head towards the food counter. The cafeteria was indeed crowded but doesn’t even come close to being full, hence, for them to acquire a table for four after piling food up on their plates was a relatively easy task.

“Now that we have finished our breakfast, I’ll begin explaining how the education system in the Academy works,” Aster, who was sitting opposite to Rey, spoke after Hinoko finished her meal and now sitting in between Rey and Eli on the table, “First of all, you can spend maximum ten years in the Academy, though the recommended amount of years studying here is eight. For geniuses and prodigies, four years are suffice for them, although they can still stay until the tenth year rolls by.

You can take as many classes as you want, given that you can pass the Level Exams, it’s to show how much mastery you have concerning the subject. There are three small tests in the first three semesters and in the final semester, the Level Exams will be held. Depends on the subject you chose, the types of tests and exams can vary much. For written tests, the Circulum will guide you to one of the ‘test rooms’ in the library.

You must choose a language class and pass the 8th Level Exam, that is the only compulsory class you have to take no matter what. If you don’t prefer to stay for four, eight or ten years in the Academy, you can choose to stay for five or six years instead. Once you chose the subjects you wish to study, you need to choose a time slot; you will have to ‘fight’ for it because there are time slots that most students prefer. The timetable for every class of every subject in on the Academy’s website.

If you detest attending classes, there are always alternatives. For example. If you dislike interacting with a teacher, you can join official study groups where older students teach the younger ones or simply to have a discussion with your peers to learn more. If that doesn’t suit you either, try learning from reading, visit the library or just stay in your room and access all the information you need through your Circulum. You can use whatever method you wish so long you pass the tests. If you, unfortunately, failed the test, you can retake it during the holidays after each semester.

The test papers are prepared by the algorithm in your Circulum as it records your studying progress and determines the difficulty of the questions. Let’s say the syllabus this semester of your mathematics class concerns the method to perform multiplication and division. You are excellent in multiplication but weak in division. The algorithm, based on this fact, will give you more division questions than multiplication questions.

During your first semester, you can take and drop any subjects you want. This is to allow students to try out different things and choose which subject they really wanted. After the first semester, you will have to stick with whatever subject you chose until the end of the year and wait for the next year’s first semester to roll by. For those who finally settled down with their desired subjects at the start of the second semester, they are required to study extra hard in order to squeeze in four semesters’ worth of studying into three semesters’ worth of time. Which is why I recommend the both of you to decide what subjects you really want to delve into before the week ends.

That is the simplest explanation I can give you. There are still a lot of written and unwritten rules regarding this topic but you’ll just have to look it up yourself, otherwise, the three of us will have to sit here all day long. Any questions?” Seeing that the two freshmen didn’t say a single word, he continued on to the next point.

“Next is the currency of the Academy, Units. Before I go in any further, I should mention that you can convert Units to Crowns and vice versa. However, Units are twice the value of Crowns, so think carefully before you decide to convert the currency. One of the main reason for this is to discourage parents from giving too much support to their children as the Academy wants its students to be independent. There are a lot of ways to earn Units, one of which is just going to class every day, although it’s a slow progress. If you performed excellently in the Level Exams or you won first place in a competition, you’ll get a lot of Units. There are also achievement rewards, which is essentially acknowledging a person’s record-breaking act. Joining associations, clubs or guilds and finishing tasks given to you will also increase your Units. Another classic way to get Units is to do business or trade goods with other students. There are hundreds if not thousands of way to earn Units.

Units aren’t given to you only for buying things in the Academy, you will have to pay your daily expenses as well. After this week, the buffet we enjoyed just now will end and you have to buy your own meals in the dorms or in the Academy. One thing you need to know is the dorm punishes heavily for those who did not finish their meal and throw it away, although it’s not like you can’t choose from a variety of cuisines or that the food is terrible--”

“Hello, brat!” It was the blonde bastard and his friends again standing beside the table. Alan didn’t give any of them a chance to respond upon his arrival as he pointed his index finger, with a bronze ring on it, at Rey and uttered one word, “Force!” The ring on his finger instantly shattered into dust and a screen appeared before Rey’s and Alan’s eyes.

“What are you doing?!” Aster stood up from his seat and confronted Alan.

“What are you, blind? Can’t you see the two of us are engaging in a Challenge?” He smiled sinisterly.

“You used Force on a first-year! Have you no shame?!”

“I should remind you,” He walked even closer to Aster, “that if you are attempting to interfere with our Challenge, I’ll report you to the Enforcers.” Aster stifled his anger and did nothing but stare.

“You’re not getting away this time, brat! You and I are going to play a game, The Avarice Wisdom. If I win, you will not only be my underling for the rest of your time in the Academy, you’re also going to hand me over all the Units you earned from here on out! And just so you know, you can’t decline my sincere invitation.”

“Aren’t you so confident after you lose to me once? Fine. I’ll play with you. If you lose, however, you will be my underling instead.” Eli was astounded by Rey’s reply despite the dark grin. He thought Rey was merely an intelligent person with a cold attitude. He liked this badass side of Rey, furthering his respect for his new hero.

“Tch. This time, you really are way over your head. Do you even know what The Avarice Wisdom is? I bet you have no idea what it is and--”

“You’re right. I don’t know because I haven’t read about how to find Ratsel to enter the Chamber of Choice. Now, would you mind if we can get this over with quickly? I’m tired of seeing your face.” Aster can’t help but gave Rey a slow clap. Rey enjoyed the look on Alan’s face--confused, and flabbergasted. Alan recovered from his shock and proceeded to type something on the screen. In front of Rey, words appeared slowly in the blank brackets. He observed the screen for awhile then go on to fill in his part of the brackets. In the “Requirement to Win” part, the words in the brackets, written by Alan and saw by Rey, were “Whoever to Complete The Avarice Wisdom First”. After the both of them were done, a final confirmation box popped out. Without hesitation, Rey pressed “Confirm” and so did Alan. He and his “friends” strode away in a fast pace, disappearing from Rey’s view after the Challenge screen vanished.

“You’re amazing Rey! You. Are. Amazing. How do you know about the Chamber of Choice?” Aster sat back down, his eyes sparkled admiration.

“I read about it last night.” Rey was impassive as ever.

“It’s still impressive. And the Challenge! You knew about it! You must’ve done some serious research before coming here.” Rey said nothing despite that was not true. The book he was reading yesterday was nothing more than a brief introduction to all the interesting locations within the Academy. The Challenge system along with the explanation given by Aster minutes ago was absolutely new to Rey. The contents of the screen brought up by Alan was relatively easy to understand, but other than that, he has no clue to what just happened. In his mind, he was pondering whether if he should ask for Aster to enlightened him or figured it out himself later.

“Oh, my. It seems Eli here has trouble following what’s going on. Allow me to introduce you The Challenge System. It was created during the middle of the Great Age of Technology when ‘cellphones’ were just invented. In case you didn’t know, cellphones are the predecessor of the Circulum. There have always been incidents of students fighting each other and in the end were wounded badly or even dying. At times, terrifying villains and powerful heroes emerged to fight against each other because of something insignificant happened within the school ground, like the legend of Mage of The End and The Hero of Void. The Academy tried to find a way in order to resolve students’ disputes but to no avail. Then came the Great Age of Technology and all of the problems were solved, or at the very least, avoided many tragedies. The Challenge System is what its name implies, a system to allow students to challenge each other in any possible way without endangering anyone. The following are the procedures for setting up a challenge.

1) Send out an invitation to the person you want to challenge. You can see the app in the ‘Academy Page’ came with the chip. Write down his/her name and click ‘Send’. He/She will receive your invitation. Now, all you have to do is wait. If the person at the receiving end declines your invitation, you have to wait for another thirty minutes to send again. However, if you want to challenge the same person after one of you won a challenge, you’ll have to wait twenty-four hours before you can do that. If that person finds you too annoying because you have been spamming the invitation, he/she can put your name on the blacklist, thus preventing you from ever sending an invitation to said person until your name has been removed from the list. Also, you can send invitations to multiple people at once or the way around or organize a team challenge. As for why Rey couldn’t decline the challenge earlier, that’s another thing. I’ll tell you about it later.

2) Fill in the Challenge Contract. The details include names, which year you are in, how many people are involved in the challenge, what is the format of the challenge, the condition to win, the rewards, the location, date, time, special requirements and or limitations, et cetra, et cetra. The challenge can be held in anywhere within the Academy and it can be anything you imagine, whether it’s sports, battles or an essay competition. Most challenges take place in the Mirror Dimension, an exact replica of our world but while in that dimension, you can’t affect the real world even if you destroy everything within the dimension. Every time someone enters the dimension, everything will be reset to match its real world counterpart.

In some cases, there are those who can’t decide on the reward or thinks that the reward the opponent provided is not fair or wants to win so badly they would use underhanded means to ensure their victory. Enter the Enforcers. The Challenge System has its own flaws, hence there exist a group of people making sure no one is abusing it. They are a part of the Student Council, so don’t get on their bad side. They deal with everything related to the Challenge System and nothing more. They are not to be confused with the Defenders, upholders of the rules of the Academy. You can learn more about them on their official site.

3) Once the challenge commences, every participant will fight to achieve the condition to win. In certain situations, Enforcers will be called upon to make sure no one is altering parts of the real world to influence the Mirror Dimension. There is a ‘Spectacle Mode’ which allows people from the real world to observe everything that happened in the Mirror Dimension. This mode was created because there are competitions that use the Challenge System as well and the audience doesn’t want to miss anything. In this case, the Challenge System act as a shortcut to the Mirror Dimension. As anything we do in the Mirror Dimension cannot affect the real world, it’s incredibly convenient for a lot of situations like when someone wants to test out their new spells or simply wishes to get some space. Also, when we are ‘killed’ in the dimension, we won’t die. After we’re ejected from the dimension, no matter the severity of our wounds, our bodies will be restored to the state before we enter the dimension; if we do die in the dimension, we’ll blackout when we exit the dimension.

4) Now, about the rewards. After the challenge is over, the winners get their reward and the losers go home empty handed. It might seem nothing complicated at first glance but it gets tricky when the rewards are intangible. Let’s say that a guy sent out a challenge invitation to a girl and the reward for him is the girl becomes his girlfriend. He wins and he got himself a girlfriend. A few months later, the girl got sick of him and wanted to leave, but if she did, she is violating the Challenge System rules; however, it’s breaking the Academy's rule to force someone to do something they don’t want. You see what I’m getting here? This is why we are advised not to put immaterial things as a reward, it’s a pain to deal with. Enforcers are pretty much required to be present at challenges which fall into these situations.” He emptied his glass of orange juice after the lengthy explanation.

Eli more or less understood and committed most of it to his memory whereas Rey ‘recorded’ the entire speech into his mind without much effort. Aster placed the empty glass down on the table before advancing to another round of intense explanation.

“Now, for the reason why Rey could not refuse the challenge. Briseur, or ‘Breaker’, is a device that allows the user to break certain rules within the Challenge System. There are three types of Briseur: Force, Object, and Cancel. All three of the Briseur takes the form of a simple ring but in different colours. Force is silver, Object is copper and Cancel is gold. They are expensive, this is why not many people would buy them despite allowing them to bypass some rules.

Object is the cheapest one as its only function is to nullify the effects of Force and Cancel. Its effects can only be triggered when you have it on your finger when the other two is used.

Force grant the user to send out a challenge invitation which cannot be declined. Unless you have Object on you when Force is used or you possesses a Cancel, you can’t escape from it. Some might think themselves as being clever by ignoring it. They couldn’t be any more wrong. The longer you respond to a Forced invitation, the less you can take from your opponent; and if you’re so persistent, the system will eventually decide your reward automatically. However, there is a flaw intentionally built into the Force Briseur. During usual challenges, the rewards proposed by opposing sides has to have more or less equal value, except for a few situations. When Force is used, the one on the receiving end can propose a reward half the value of what the user submitted, given that you don’t drag on for too long.

Cancel is the most powerful Briseur and the most expensive one. Its ability is to cancel the effects of other Briseur or the entire challenge even though it’s still going on.

Those three are the legal Briseur. I say that because there are rumours of more powerful Briseur being sold in black market. I don’t know about you, but I believe they are real and they are extremely dangerous. So be careful if you do come across these Briseur.

There is just one last thing I need to tell you. The Challenge System doesn’t operate independently. It utilizes the Trade System when the winner has been decided. The Trade System is a formalize system which students used to trade items with others. You can check it out yourself.” He stopped and stare intently at Rey.

“You should go to the Academy right now, Rey. Alan already had a head start and he definitely has some plans or tricks to beat the game faster than you to invite you to a challenge. The point being, if you need my help, just say so.” Aster imagined Rey would eye at him unemotionally as he considers his offer for several minutes.

“Let’s go then. Time’s ticking.” There wasn’t even a pause between Aster’s last word and Rey’s swift reply. The two of them adopted Rey’s action of removing himself from the chair and power-walked at the direction of the elevator as Hinoko leapt onto his shoulder. When exited from the elevator, Aster took the lead whilst the two youngsters trotted behind, making way for the station outside. Rey noticed Eli’s faint anxiousness on him.

“Don’t push yourself thinking too hard, Eli. Take your time.” This abrupt sentence came out from Rey startled him slightly. He was quite confident that he hid his nervousness, due to his incapability of fully processing all the explanation given by Aster whilst Rey has no problem whatsoever. In any case, Rey’s word alleviated his uneasiness. The monorail arrived just in time when they reached the station. The compartment they entered was nearly empty, hence Aster went on to inform Rey the history of The Avarice Wisdom, passed only from mouth to mouth, in an intermediately loud voice.

“The Avarice Wisdom is one of the Eight Wonders of Yggdrasil Academy. Like the other seven, its origin is widely unknown. I assume you knew of The Avarice Wisdom from the book, Place of Interest in Yggdrasil Academy,” Rey gave a nod, “Then you certainly would know that there aren’t in-depth descriptions for all of the place of interest. This is because of an ancient rule, ‘Thee shalt not speaketh of its secrets’, which forbids anyone who once entered the Academy from telling those who didn’t about what lies within those walls. It was even punishable by death a long, long time ago. At some point in the recent past, people thought the rules were too strict, so they loosen it. Now, people can talk about it openly, but they still won’t deliberately let outsiders know too much, that is why the book contains little information about the places.

Regarding The Avarice Wisdom, I apologize for telling you that it is one of the Wonders. I’ve mistaken it for Ratsel as does most of the students. You will understand why I made this error after listening to what I have to say. Ratsel isn’t a single entity, rather it’s a collection of doors. You heard me right, Ratsel is a collection of doors, The Enigma Doors. These doors are everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It might be quite difficult to understand but bear with me. The doors that are part of Ratsel have the ability to lead people into rooms other than the original, physically attached rooms. In order to activate it, you will need to meet the incredibly specific conditions. However, there were two problems to find one. There were no tangible records of all the doors that are a part of Ratsel and the requirements to activate known doors. As for why Ratsel was created in the first place, there is a story behind it. Before the Academy was, well, an academy, it was a fortress; the size of the structure was much, much smaller than it is now. Those who occupied it were afraid of intruders stealing valuable items from them. So, they created overlapping multi-dimensional doors which will allow them to access important rooms while preventing intruders from ever finding them. Unfortunately, they lost to a much stronger faction and all of them were killed. They didn’t write down this secret anywhere so nobody knew such doors exist, that is, until after the Academy was founded.

According to the legend, a professor had supposedly found a ‘Master Room’ that connected to all the Ratsel doors by accident. The Professor didn’t know what to do with it at first, thus he called a few close students and colleagues and tell them about it. They weren’t interested in any of the treasures they found, but they became somewhat obsessed with the doors themselves. Long story short, they decided to expand Ratsel to the entire Academy. There were speculations of why they did it, although most people believed they did it for fun. This theory was widely accepted because of The Avarice Wisdom. You see, the legend says that The Professor invited many like-minded people to join him. Among those people, one of them had an idea of turning one of the rooms to become a starting point of a treasure hunt. But that person wanted to let others play the treasure hunt when The Professor wished all the doors to be activated through normal means, that is to not give out any hints about the location and the way to activate it. The Professor, upon hearing that person’s suggestion, made two decisions.

First, he allowed that person to leaked out the existence of the door connected to the ‘starting point’ room, later known as Chamber of Choice and a hint to activate it. That person, along with his or her friends, created The Avarice Wisdom. I should mention that The Avarice Wisdom used only one of the Ratsel doors. The second decision The Professor made was, through the widespread news of The Avarice Wisdom, make his version of The Avarice Wisdom, The Impossible Conundrum. It seems that The Professor changed his mind after all. His ‘treasure hunt’ contains little to no clues about the whereabouts of the rest of the Ratsel. Originally, he didn’t say anything about treasures, which is why no one even bothers to search for Ratsel. After that, he took all the treasures in the initial Ratsel rooms and distributed them across all those hidden rooms. His plan succeeded, it attracts a lot of attention, but it was still no match for The Avarice Wisdom’s popularity as it was ridiculously difficult. After that, the group was disbanded and anyone that was once part of it was not allowed to speak of anything related to it anymore. Despite that was how the legend goes, there were rumours that the group still exist and they have expanded Ratsel to outside the Academy.” They arrived at their destination and alighted the monorail.

“Oh, one more thing. Some of the doors of Ratsel are connected to more than one place, which means there is more than one way to activate it.” They took the express lane and arrived in front of the entrance almost instantaneously. Aster gestured them to stop after stepping foot into the first hallway.

“Activate your Circulum and bring up the Academy Page,” He turned to his back, facing the duo. The three of them did as Aster said, in unity, “See the ‘Travel’ app? Tap it and enter the words ‘Fifth Ring, Sector 01, Room 23-1’. After you’re done, press ‘Confirm’.” Fingers moving as fast as they can. They arrived before an intricate door with a unique design and a peculiar keypad, alongside a screen on top of it, beside said door. after confirming their destination

“Rey, I’m going to tell you how to enter The Chamber of Choice because you’ll have to enter the room your own. First, push your palms against each other for three seconds in front of the door. Immediately after that, place both of your hands on the two hummingbirds drawing on the door for another three seconds before turning the tips of your finger towards each other. Do NOT leave any spaces between the door and your hand during the whole process. Remove your hands once five seconds have passed. When you turn the doorknob and open the door, you will be sucked into the room even though there is only a small gap between the door and the wall. You only have one try, so don’t mess it up.”

“What should I do after I went inside?” Rey asked.

“I don’t know. It seems that anyone that entered the room figured it out themselves. I’m sure you will know what to do. Eli and I will wait outside for you.” Aster backed away from the door while Rey approached it. As he followed Aster’s instruction, Aster himself was wondering if Rey’s familiar can enter the room together with her master. Rey did flawlessly and when he nudged the door to open slightly, he felt a strong force pulling him inwards.

Rey had to cover his eyes instinctively due to the sudden bright light shining down on him. He began to look around the room after his eyes had adjusted itself. Hinoko was more curious than Rey, jumping to his head and goggling around the mystical chamber in an excited manner. The room was smaller than his dorm room but it seems to extend infinitely towards the top. The walls of the chamber were maroon in colour, although the blinding light directly above the middle of the room made the colour lighter. It feels like he was in a tiny, cylindrical tower rather than a regular room as he imagined; it even had a spiral staircase attached to the walls to his right to strengthen the connection.

Aster was right when he said anyone that goes in figured it out what to do themselves. There were massive amounts of gem floating in the room; not everywhere in the room, but where the light touches. Somehow, Rey could feel the room is compelling him to take one of the gems. He resisted the feeling and tread his way up the staircase. After walking for a minute or so, something interesting happened.

His pendant was resonating. It was weak, though not weak enough to not be detected. It guided Rey to go up and up with the increased resonance until even Hinoko was drawn to one of the gems in front of him. There were still multiple choices in front of him; he wasn’t sure which one was the ‘correct’ one. He reached out his hand, almost touching the closest gem, and his eye colour began to change, from ice blue to black with tiny streams of ultramarine spreading away from the center. Strips of the same colour gradually appeared from his hand and slowly extending towards the gem; at the same time, his other hand enclosed the blue pendant with the same strips covering it; the strips from both of his hand were also moving in a such a way that it would be connected with one and another. After the strips engulfed most of the gem, it made its way slowly through the air to another one; the strips moved in all direction, eagerly searching for the resonating gem.

When the strips made the first contact with a ruby as large as his palm, the almost-perfect cylindrical gem and his pendant reached the maximum resonance which he took it as a sign to deactivate his Ingenium. The ruby, as if it had a mind of its own, floated past the space between them and settled down on his opened hand. Without any warning, he felt a strong force repelling him out of the room as his vision became dark.

Eli wanted to say “Good Luck” to Rey, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t find the courage to do such a simple thing. Rey helped him, and he wasn’t a bit curious about his real form. Inside his head, he scolded himself for not able to deliver two simple words to express his gratitude. It doesn’t matter what Rey think of it, it’s something he believed he was “supposed” to do but failed to. He would continue to dwell in his thought if not for Aster’s sudden question.

“Do you know about the Rings of the Academy, Eli?” After Rey entered the door, both of them retreated to the wall beside the door and stood against it. Aster was standing left to the door while Eli was awkwardly beside him, much further away from the door. Eli glanced at him then shook his head slightly.

“Since Rey probably already knew about this, I figured I should take the time now to explain it to you.

Within the Academy building, there are eight Rings. Between these Rings, there are hallways connecting the Rings.

The First Ring consists of classrooms of much more ‘active’ subjects like alchemy or magic. The reason why is because if something goes wrong, it wouldn’t cause as much damage compared to if the classrooms are placed inside the inner Rings.

The clubs, associations or guilds that are in the Second Ring have the same reason as the first one. In extreme cases, the members will cause serious damages to the surroundings. Don’t worry about it though, it doesn’t happen that often.

The Third Ring, which you had definitely seen, have the eight halls and shopping complexes in between those halls. Pretty much everything sold outside the Academy can be bought there, including exclusive stuff that can only be bought inside the Academy. All the shops there are run by students, and if you want to have a shot at doing business, you can start there.

The Fourth and Fifth Ring are similar to the First and Second Ring, except the activities and subjects here are much more ‘boring’, like mathematics or literature. This room beside me, when its door was not being used as a Ratsel, is one of the Art Club’s room. Or is it the Sculpture Club? I don’t remember.

The Sixth Ring is the library, formally known as ‘Wisdom of The Ancients’, translated from a language that was on the brink of extinction. All the books written in Speir, even before the inception of the library itself, and the books which were collected from other realms are stored there. Although they say every book in the library can be read by anyone, you would still need clearance for certain types of books.

The Seventh Ring is where the workplace of the Student Council and our government lies. You cannot simply wander into that Ring or the one after. It’s for security measures and normal students usually don’t get involved with the people in that Ring.

Last but not least, the Eighth Ring is the most special Ring in the entire Academy. It’s a garden. It’s a regular, normal garden,” Eli raised his head up and stared at Aster with a look of disbelief. He stared back at him, “Of course, it wasn’t just a normal garden. In the absolute center of the Academy, the realm of Speir and the realm lies a tree. This tree is Yggdrasil, the first plant that existed after the speculative event, Apocalypse of The God of Destruction. It’s kinda funny that the legendary World Tree, or the less preferred name Realm Tree, is just one plain and simple tree. Many had studied the tree, trying to find signs of uniqueness of the tree. In the end, there was but one unique thing about Yggdrasil--it’s one of a kind. Other than that, they found out the tree couldn’t reproduce in any way. The garden around the tree was created afterward and became a place for the people from the Seventh Ring to take a break. And that concludes my brief introduction of the Rings. Was my explanation good?” Eli nodded and shifted his sight back on the ground.

Aster wanted to crack a joke but resisted seeing that Eli would probably be even more uncomfortable. He knows how it feels like, trying to accustomed to new places. It was much worse for him in the past as he wasn’t a resident of Speir, to begin with.

Two boys appeared at the other side of the hallway and initiated a conversation upon their arrival.

“How long are we gonna wait for him to come?”

“A few more minutes, maybe. Hey, did you heard about the guy with a naked, green-haired baby on his back? It seems that the freshman took the 666th spot in the ‘Raw Strength’ ranking on the first day!”

“Yeah, I heard about that guy. Despite his skinny appearance, he punched the heck out of the previous 666th spot guy. For a delinquent like him, it’s kinda silly that people named him ‘The Child-Rearing Badass.’”

“It won’t be funny if we ever come across with him. I hope I’ll never have to meet this guy.”

“Same.”

Moments after the two guys in front of Aster and Eli finished their conversation, Rey fell over to his knees after he came out the door, which was shut back immediately. He declined Aster’s help and got back to his feet; on the other hand, Hinoko was not affected in any way because she already attached herself firmly on his shoulder by using a small trick.

“What now?” Rey passed the ruby to Aster.

“I shall explain the rules,” Aster parsed the entire gem before handing it back to Rey.

“There are, in total, seven stages in The Avarice Wisdom. For each stage, you will have to complete one task within twenty-four hours. If you fail to do that, the gem will disappear and you lose the game, forever. You cannot go back to get yourself another gem. The tasks will only demand you to find a location or something that is permanently fixed in one place; however, the tasks varies for each person and will never repeat itself, even if a thousand years has passed by. The format of the hints also varies with people, but it will stay the same way for all seven stages; the single exception being bold words or numbers represents itself as a physical thing. Other than that, there are two ‘tool’ programs. The first one is ‘Sensor’. Its purpose is to alert you that your objective is within a hundred-meter range, although the beeping won’t get faster every time you get closer to the target. You will only have four times to use it and it will be deactivated after ten seconds. The second ‘tool’ is ‘Scanner’. It informs you in which Ring your objective lies. Rey, raise up the gem and do as I say. Draw a circle on the gem.” Three words appeared on the gem once Rey had followed his instruction. The three words were “The Devil’s Well”.

“That is how you bring up the hint. Now slide your finger from the top to bottom,” The words on the gem dissolved, “That is to revert the gem to its inactive state. Now, a square,” The gem turned transparent, “After you found the objective, use this mode and aim it at the objective. If it’s a location, use this mode to look around the place for a mark that will show up on the gem but does not exist in real life. If you draw an X, it will activate the Sensor; if it’s a cross, the Scanner will reveal which Ring does your objective resides on the surface. If you draw a spiral, it will show you how much time left for you to complete the current task. After you cleared all the stages, the gem will lead you to a treasure. That is all I can tell you about The Avarice Wisdom. Now that I’ve finished the explanation, what will you--Woah! What are you doing?!” He couldn’t help to stop himself raising his voice because Rey was attempting to draw a cross, though his action was interrupted. “Are you sure you want to use the Scanner right now? Perhaps we should--”

“According to Place of Interest in Yggdrasil Academy, there are more than a hundred places that are associated with the word ‘devil’. As we are far behind Alan, using the Scanner would be the most logical choice for this situation.” Aster found his reason sound, hence he didn’t bother to come up with a counter. Rey drew the cross, found where he needed to go next and shoved the gem into his pocket.

“Our first stop will be the Sixth Ring.” Rey brought up the Travel app once more and entered the coordinates. As soon as the other two had entered the coordinates, the three of them pressed the ‘Confirm’ button in perfect sync.

✵End of Chapter 2✵

Advisor: Jigoku Shounen